a life of doing and loving, of boundless love, of love for everybody and everything . . . No, after so many years had been spent in living the life of a plant, until the plant became yellow and sere, then inevitably, inexorably extinction, slow extinction, was the only hope that remained . . .
The absurdity, of being so old—forty-three—and feeling like that! . . . Never, she swore, would she allow anybody to perceive that absurdity. She knew quite well that it was not really absurd, that its absurdity existed only in the narrow little circle of little prejudices and little dogmas. But she also knew that she, like all of them, was small, that she herself was full of prejudice; she knew that she could not rise, could never rise above what she considered absurd, what she had been taught, from a child, in her little circle, to look upon as absurd!
No, now that she was old, there was nothing for her but to turn her eyes from the radiant vision and, calmly, to grow still older . . . to go towards that slow extinction which perhaps would still drag on for many long and empty years: the years of a woman of her age . . . in their set . . .
